I Know Why This Caged Bird Sings

After reading Foucault's "What is an Author?", the author is interested in language, power, and pleasure. He dissects the relationship between the text and the author. The author’s function is a result from legal and institutional systems, the way the text was written, and the process of the design of the text. As readers we use the author to interpret the text and it is the way we use the author to do this that the text actually determines the author.

Maya Angelou is a highly celebrated author who allows her personal stories and life influence her work. In her interview for The Paris Review, by George Plimpton, she enlightened me with her personal writing process and her connection to texts. We learn about how she rents a room in a hotel for months that she writes in. All of the wall art must be taken down and she must have a supply of sherry. She was mute for five years after being raped and thinking her voice killed the man, not her brother. Angelou’s life is fascinating , but to her it is a simple life.

The interview dissects Angelou’s writing process and factors that contribute greatly to her writing subjects through the questions he asks. Angelou explains that she focuses on the rhythm and the language. She states how, “I want to hear how English sounds; how Edna St. Vincent Millay heard English. I want to hear it, so I read it aloud. It is not so that I can then imitate it. It is to remind me what a glorious language it is. Then, I try to be particular and even original.”

To Angelou her work is the culmination of her life and her love of language, which is clearly evident in the interview. With writing autobiographies Angelou feels as though she is following in a sacred tradition, similar to Frederick Douglass. She states the best part of writing for her is, “when the language lends itself to me, when it comes and submits, when it surrenders and says, I am yours, darling—that’s the best part.” A lot of her work is connected to her personal experiences that have had an effect on her as a person.

Through the questions, the interviewer poses most that are interrogating of her own work, but then some that are pointed more at the nature of a writer in general. An example of this is when he asks, “Aren’t you tempted to lie? Novelists lie, don’t they?”.

Angelou focuses heavily in this interview on the senses of writing and the movement. She discusses the movement and pliability of language. The interviewer asked,

INTERVIEWER

If you had to endow a writer with the most necessary pieces of equipment, other than, of course, yellow legal pads, what would these be?  

ANGELOU

Ears. Ears. To hear the language. But there’s no one piece of equipment that is most necessary. Courage, first.

She is so focused on the nature of writing: the sound and the feeling.

In Angelou’s writing, she is the audience. Angelou states,

“When I’m writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we’re capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. I’m trying for that. But I’m also trying for the language. I’m trying to see how it can really sound. I really love language. I love it for what it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and the glory, the nuances and the delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language.“

Take a Death Drive and Delay The Search

Professor Shelden’s blog on psychoanalysis sheds a new light on psychoanalytic theory.  She makes many valid and interesting points throughout her blog and I wish I had the time to talk about all of them in detail, but that would take far too long, so I have picked three that stood out the most to me.  The first would be the idea of “slippage”.  Secondly is the relationship between desire and language.  Finally is the concept of the “death drive”.  These three ideas allowed me to understand psychoanalytic theory in a new way.

This idea of slippage is very interesting.  To understand it one must realize that Lacan has changed Saussure’s theory of the signified.  In Saussure’s theory the signified is the privileged term, but in Lacan’s theory the signifier becomes the privileged term.  Lacan is suggesting that language just gives the illusion of words having meaning.  All language is doing is referring one signifier to the next and so on and so forth.  Slippage is just that; passing one signifier to the next, with no end it sight.  Slippage is the illusion of meaning.  When slippage and metonymy come together we are thrown into a search for meaning that will never end.  This meaning becomes a missing puzzle piece in the human body and we, as humans, interpret it as desire.

Every human exist within language without language no human would exist.  Within language there is an absence and that  is desire.  An example that Ashley used which helped me was the idea of language being a puzzle and desire was the missing piece that is needed to complete the puzzle.  In order for one to exist within language one must continually circle the absence trying to fill the hole or desire.  Lacan sees language and desire as the same thing.  We are constantly trying to find the meaning of language but we can’t find it; just like how we constantly desire new things, like shoes, computers, or vacation.  Just like in the search for meaning once we achieve what we desire we are not satisfied, and we start the search all over again.  We can only approach the object which we desire we can never reach it because once you reach the object you will find that it is not as good as you thought. 

Death Drive is contradictory to Lacan’s whole theory.  There are many phrases and words for death drive but the most common is orgasm.  The death drive allows you to abandon the search for meaning and identity for a short time.  This is possible because in order to reach orgasm one must completely let go of everything. The death drive strives to preserve the void in the puzzle.  “The death drive thus directs human subjects away from Symbolic and Imaginary coherence and towards the single goal of sexual satisfaction.”  This means that sexuality has nothing to do with identity.  The thought of “sexual identity” is actually false.  There is no sexual identity since they are so different.

What I have concluded from Professor’s Shelden’s blog that psychoanalytic theory sees life as a circle.  Humans are always on the search for meaning and can only escape the search when on a “death drive”.  Also there is no meaning to language that each signifier just slips to the next signifier.  In my opinion psychoanalytic theory is a large circle.

Dear Derrida, We miss you.

Derrida implies the irony of himself being filmed from the beginning of the film, referring to cinema verite.  Derrida and the film crew both realize that what they are capturing is not the truth, and not a real documentation of Derrida’s real life. Derrida does not believe in one “true” self-image. He points out several times the cameras, and how they are a mockery and not projecting what is the truth. The directors realize the irony of the film, and how what is being shot is not the truth. This is best seen when Derrida is talking about how if the film crew were not there, he would stay in his pajamas, as he does most days until he actually leaves the house. In an ideal documentary, the directors would want him to stay in the pajamas all day to show a sense of reality and authenticity. The directors probably wished they could capture that normalness of Derrida. However, he knows that the whole thing is a kind of misrepresentation, so he decides to get dressed for the filming. 

            The format of the biography is so that you are aware of the falseness of the movie. The editors could have cut out all of the time Derrida brings attention to the fakeness of the cameras, but they chose to leave it in, furthering the very idea of Derrida. The style and the layout of the film definitely brings forth an acknowledgement of Derrida’s ideas. First of all, it is a bit disconcerting, with all the subtitles, voiceovers, and shaky camera shots. Jacques Derrida’s ideas are always revolving and progressing, and a little bit confusing, much like the tone of the movie. I think the best word to describe the tone of the movie is deviation. One minute, we see Derrida lighting a pipe, strolling across a street playfully. The next minute, we hear this voiceover of a monotone woman quoting him, whose voice makes me want to fall asleep. I think this layout of the movie intends to make us think that there is no one true “self” version of Derrida; he is both the joyful little Frenchman and also the voice behind the thoughtful words.

            As I said before, there are two very distinct versions of Derrida we see in the film. There is the one who, if I can be blunt, is the coolest old guy I’ve ever seen. He walks down the street smoking a pipe, recklessly crosses traffic, and bumbles around his house. I can relate to him. I think that this is why the film works so well. Who would have thought an amazing philosopher could be so normal and cool? Then, through the film we see the intellectual side of Derrida. One way is through the voiceovers, which quote him directly.  Another is through the interviews with the film crew, which show a more hands-on, personal point of view. These parts are my favorite, because we can see him thinking in action. Then, we also see him interacting with others, like at lectures. The intellectual side to him is obviously brilliant, and I like when we can see him talking his way through his ideas the best.

            Derrida seems quite resistant to the interviewing process. To be honest, I found it entertaining when Derrida would laugh and scoff at the interviewer’s questions. Derrida does not seem to want to waste time with questions that are dull to him, like when Amy asked him his opinion on love. I think that if you asked anyone, not only a brilliant philosopher to describe love, they would not really be able to. At times like this, Derrida looks as though he is over the interview process, but then he will come back with a brilliant answer, like his opinion on love, and how we love either a “who” or “what”.

            Derrida has a strong grasp on the philosophy of life, but when he is introduced to our current cultural mediums he struggles in understanding the correlation we have with media. When the sitcom, Seinfeld, is addressed in the documentary, Derrida comments to read and do your homework. He feels that there is little to no need for the popular media we are accustomed to. In today’s world we use media and cultural phenomena to help us grasp ideas. We use it to understand more complex thoughts.

This Youtube video is an extra from the dvd. He discusses the way Americans will see the film, and how his image will be distorted according to them. Chillingly, he also says "the film will survive me". The video shows Derrida's wisdom, and overall affectionate side, which I have come to adore throughout the movie!     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otV7OHgrO4A

Extra Credit:

Scritti Politti started out as a left-wing British rock group. Over time, their genre changed to pop. Green Gartside, the lead singer, was extremely influenced by readings in the field of deconstruction. The lyrics of their songs, in particular Jacques Derrida, address political and cultural messages based on deconstructive readings. The lyrics of the song, “Jacques Derrida”, by Scritti Politti, are part of a love song.

I'm in love with a Jacques Derrida

Read a page and know what I need to

Take apart my baby's heart

I'm in love

I'm in love with a Jacques Derrida

Read a page and know what I need to

Take apart my baby's heart

I'm in love

It is about loving someone, and trying to figure out their feelings. This verse is specifically talking about Derrida. Literally, it is saying that the writer read Derrida’s work, and he now knows how to deconstruct and win over the girl’s heart. By deconstructing this structure of the heart, he has found true meaning. I googled the lyrics and found an anecdote about how after Derrida heard the song, he invited the lead singer, Green Gartside to dinner in Paris. I would love to have heard their conversation!

The Words We Use

The quote I am going to look at is " in language there is only differences without positive terms". I feel that Saussure was saying language and different words mean different things to everyone. Also I feel that all those three statements are interconnected meaning that they related to one another. I feel with language, people can get confused when talking about the same thing. For example, both people are talking about soda, but one person calls it tonic and the other person calls it pop. There could be a miscommunication with language because people grew up with different terms for the same things. From Saussure's writing, you can tell he is a smart man. I see the point he is trying to make with his writing. Another point I would like to make is that people can still come up with different images for abstract ideas. My image of what love is could vary very much from what another person's image of love.  This is all I can come up with for now, I hope everyone likes it!